I really liked this book and because I liked it, it was a quick read.
If you enjoy books where a friend falls for her friend, this is the book for you! This book has a bit of a twist. Both friends have the same feelings for the other. Only neither of them know. Most of their friends and family have guessed this, both they are clueless.
The book revolves around Sasha and Kinsey. Kinsey keeps most people at arms length since her last girlfriend dumped her. Sasha makes flirty remarks to Kinsey which Kinsey brushes off as her being funny. She does not suspect that the remarks are true.
A family emergency for Kinsey sparks Sasha to offer to drive hundreds of miles so she can be there. Kinsey accepts and the time together only reinforces the feelings they have.
A great read that I recommend.
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.5/5

College Roommates, best friends to lovers, roadtrip, and they share a bed. More sweet than spicy, with two funny sarcastic main characters, Sasha and Kinsey.

Overall I thought this was a pretty good book, although it did take me a while to get into it. The Map to You opens with a pretty long prologue, 10 months before the start of the story, and jumps from the characters just meeting each other to being best friends in that time. I later realized this is the second book in the series, and the first book took place between those chapters. So it is possible their friendship is built out in the first book, but it left me a little confused in the beginning.

Both of the main characters were dynamic, and relatable. Sasha is kind and thoughtful to others but doesn’t see herself deserving of the same. Kinsey is worried her grumpiness makes her a bad daughter, friend, and hopeful girlfriend.

Quick warning, Don’t let the cute cover deceive you this book is pretty angsty, not between the main characters but from those around them. TW for child abuse, child neglect, drug use, and toxic relationships

"But I do so like you. I think about kissing you all the time. And jerk that I am, I hate the idea of you kissing anyone else.”

The Map To to You is a sweet yet heavy concept sapphic contemporary read. Like Rachel Stockbridge's bio said at the end of the book mentions, you will be cheering on the characters in the book.

I loved that with the storyline of both Sasha and Kinsey you can not only see their own growth but as well as a couple together. However I didn't like the interference from the outside world, I just wanted them to forget and just get together! 

If you like friends to lovers, close/forced proximity, family issues, sapphic books, then you might like this book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Rachel Stockbridge for the digital copy of The Map To You.

Okay - first off - this book definitely looks and sounds like a fluffy, easy-to-read contemporary romance, but I am here to tell you to not let the beautifully illustrated cover fool you!

The Map to You has angst in spades. Just lashings and lashings of family drama, internal struggles, misunderstandings, and communication issues all wrapped up in this very cute, quite misleading package. With that said though - I enjoyed every minute of it.

Kinsey and Sasha are two absolutely wonderful leads, and I loved the richness that Stockbridge brought to both of their characters. It's a dual POV novel (it's romance, so of course!), so we really get to dive into the nitty-gritty of what each character is going through over the course of the story. Sasha is (secretly) dealing with a wayward mum and internalising all her abandonment issues; Kinsey is struggling to reconnect with her parents after a blow-out over her ex. Their journeys almost mirror each other in a way, and it works so well for this story.

I know we are all about the enemies-to-lovers (guilty), but there is something so sweet and heartwarming about friends-to-lovers. The pining. The yearning! The "I don't want to ruin our friendship so I just won't say anything" and the "there's no way she could possibly like me like that after we've been friends for so long"! The shift in the relationship! It's done perfectly in The Map to You and I loved seeing Kinsey and Sasha navigate all their fears and feelings to Make It Work.

I will definitely be reading more of Rachel Stockbridge's work. Queer new adult romance? Yes please!

Thank you to NetGalley and to Rachel Stockbridge for providing me with an ARC of this novel.

I find this a difficult book to review. The playful cover doesn't fully prepare the reader for some of the hard familial topics discussed in this book (which, overall, is completely fine) but it also didn't quite prepare me for this to be a novel set in college either. So I think I went in with different expectations. Overall - this is a really good exploration of what it means to actually let another human into your life, on every level. Sometimes that means letting them in on trauma that you'd rather not unpack and some emotional fallout that no one is ready for. This is a distinctly human experience. Unfortunately, the pacing was a little off for me - and I'm not sure there was enough digging into the backstory for me to really care about a character's past experiences from the get-go. Plus the tension/plot point between Sasha and her mother just felt a tad forced at some points. Overall I would recommend this for people looking for a realistic portrayal of sapphic relationships and the importance of believing in ourselves and each other throughout all our relationships.

Sasha, a varsity soccer player and Kinsey, a quirky art student find solace in each other over their 600 mile road trip after Kinsey gets a call that her mother is ill.

I liked the cute college road trip aspect of the book, but it wasn't what I was expecting when it became a book about dealing with an abusive and drug addicted parent. I still very much enjoyed it

CW:
Drug and alcohol abuse
Child abuse

Sasha and Kinsey have both been nursing secret crushes on each other since the day they met over a year ago, but both are too unsure of the others feelings to be much more than best friends. When an emergency with Kinsey's family forces Sasha and Kinsey to come together in ways they hadn't in the past, their relationship grows and changes. It is hard for them to keep their feelings at bay and even harder for Sasha to keep Kinsey at an arms length from Sasha's family problems. Do they conceal their feelings for protection or open themselves up to each others love?

I rated this a 3.5, but rounded to 4 stars.
I empathize and love these characters so much! The miscommunication trope is the main one running in this book but it was conducted in a way that didn't make me want to scream at the characters to smarten up. I could relate to how both of the characters were reacting in various situations.

The dual POV approach worked really well in this case. We got insights into both of their feelings and things that impacted how those feelings would show, or maybe not show, themselves.

I did find this one a bit hard to get into; I was over 100 pages in before I was wanting to really find out what happened. I can't pinpoint an exact reason why, I may just have been in a reading slump. Definitely some triggers for child abandonment, drug-use/overdose, and family trauma. But nothing is too graphic or looked into in a very in-depth way. It reads a bit more like a YA, but is verging on NA.

3.25 Stars. An okay read that was much different than I expected. This is one of those cases when ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’, means everything. I must have read the blurb wrong, and relied just on the cover, because I thought I was getting a cute and fluffy YA read. I was wrong because this was actually a wicked angsty, NA (characters are 21) read instead. While I do think the book did well at what it was aiming to do, I just didn’t click with it as well as I hoped.

This was not the author’s fault at all, yet it was hard for me to switch gears since I didn’t expect a book like this. I can be picky on my angst levels and while I do like a lot of angst, once in a while, I prefer it to be entertaining soap opera-like angst. This was hella angsty, but in the much more serious kind of way. Not only was it relationship angst, but it was also a lot of emotional angst too. The characters were always in their heads, worrying about everything, when actually a few conversations would have done wonders. It actually started to feel very repetitive because the same few issues would be played out over and over in the main character’s minds. I found myself wishing for more dialogue and constantly being disappointed since it was so few and far between. The writing itself was pretty good, but I’m a dialogue person so I struggled at times.

I think one of the biggest things I had trouble connecting with was that the characters didn’t seem to do much on their own agency at times. Instead, it felt like many things would just happen to them. This story had a best friends to lovers trope, yet they didn’t really fall in love because they found out they were already in love. The real story seemed to be about both main character’s parents and how their relationships with their mother’s again affected them. It seemed a lot of the outside coming in and not much of the other way around. I wanted to see Sasha rip it on the soccer field. I wanted to see their first date and to see them have more first’s together, but instead it was mostly about both of their baggage.

TLDR: This was not the type of story I was expecting, or the type of story I would normally seek out. I don’t always do well with New Adult contemporary stories, and had I not made assumptions from looking at the cover (that this was a sweet YA book instead) I probably would have skipped this read. I think the author can clearly write, but this is the case of me believing that other people would enjoy this story more than I did. If you like stories that are heavy in emotional angst and dealing with family baggage, while lighter on dialogue, this book may be for you.

Trigger Warnings: Cheating, sex, break-up, drinking, estranged parent, hospitalization, family disputes, drugs, addiction, child abuse/neglect, overdose, arrest/jail/armed robbery/possession offscreen

Representation: Chinese, Lesbian

The Map to You is the story of two college friends who take an emergency road trip from NY to NC. Sasha, the soccer goalie, likes to be single and keep an arms length from caring at all times. Kinsey, the old roommate, is living the single life since her break-up led her to Sasha’s dorm. Now the two girls must share time together and pretend they don’t have feelings for one another.

This book is for anyone interested in love, soccer, friends to lovers, break-ups, family dynamics, dysfunctional families! It would be a crime to not shout from the rooftops how much I loved this book!!

The characters are charming and sensitive, fully developed and flawed, relatable humans! I loved getting to know both Kinsey and Sasha, and diving into their world! The book has a great pace and is a fantastic story! I can’t say enough good things about it! Overall, everyone should read this book!!

What do you do when you realize you have a crush 9n your friend? How do you decide to risk your friendship for xomething more?

Sweet love story full of uncertainty, self realization and
Learning how to truly trust.

A lovely romance novel that has us on a fun journey, both literal and metaphorical. This book is heartfelt and fun, perfect for everyone searching for something inside themselves

A sweet and fluffy contemporary that isn't afraid to deal with hard topics backed up with beautiful graphics.

The Map to you by Rachel Stocckbridge is a cute and fluffy romance that also tackles some heavy issues.

The Map To You was a very lovely sapphic romance featuring two characters and a whole lot of pining. It's a very opposites attract /grumpy sunshine situation where Kinsey is artistic and Sasha is sporty, something which I initially found a little cliche. However from the first prologue the book then jumps forward into a 'best friends to lovers' situation where, typical of sapphic pining, these girls would do anything for each other. Including driving 600 miles for a family emergency. And *still* they're both like, *does she like me? Is she really into me?* in true lesbian fashion.

It was a very adorable novel that balances a lot of flirty and fun dialogue with rather serious issues. It was rather formulaic with the miscommunication trope coming in at the typical 80%, but it was done in a way that made me really empathize with the characters, rather than get frustrated at them for not communicating clearly. Overall I thought this was really sweet!

One of the very first things I noticed in this book was how much I loved the way the characters talk to each other.

Often while talking about banter in books, I focus specifically on the way the main character and love interest banter. But in this book, my first thought was how much I loved the way Kinsey, one of the main characters, banters with one of her friends. It’s just a part of her character and the way she interacts with anyone, hiding herself behind a wall of somewhat abrasive words. But I really like that about her.

I was really surprised by the fact that this book truly focuses on both of it’s main characters and their problems. Based on the description alone, I imagined this book to be about the road trip to Kinsey’s family emergency, ending with Kinsey getting on scene and figuring everything out. But this book is also about Sasha and her own family emergency, which she is keeping hidden as she helps Kinsey. I’d even go as far as to say this book is kind of angsty as both readers and Kinsey find out more about the past Sasha is trying so hard to hide…

But one of my favorite things in this book is how the relationship between Kinsey and Sasha develops along their road trip. At times I was screaming (especially at a certain gas station scene…) as I read about these two hiding their crushes from each other, so sure that the other wouldn’t like them back.

I really enjoyed myself with this book and highly recommend it to anyone who seems even the slightest bit interested. I honestly already want to do a reread and watch their story unfold again…

I finished this one yesterday on the train back from visiting my Mum for the weekend, and it was the perfect travel read to take me back to Melbourne – a fictional road trip for a ‘road trip’ of my own. The Map to You was such a sweet read which made me laugh, cry, and feel the need to close my eReader occasionally to take a breath when the characters were just being way too adorable (or at times frustrating) for me to cope.

In The Map to You Rachel Stockbridge has created a collection of vibrant characters all with their own unique perspectives and backgrounds. I loved getting to know the two main characters Sasha and Kinsey through their point of view chapters. Their differences in personality and interests, as well as the way that each character deals with their emotions is wonderfully written.

The dual narration was perfect for this story, with each narrator having a deeper insight into the thoughts and feelings of that character, and so making the complications throughout the novel even more impactful. Especially with a romance, knowing what both characters are thinking or feeling before the other character knows makes for an interesting and at times suspenseful read.

The plot for The Map to You was engaging and entertaining and played with some of my favourite romance tropes. It was also nice reading a queer romance where those involved were already out to those who mattered to them, and so the focus could be on the romance plot. Don’t get me wrong, I love a ‘coming out’ novel, but it was a nice change from what I usually read. This was especially as while the queer characters were confident in their sexuality and who they were, they still had similar, very human insecurities as portrayed in more mainstream romance stories.

This novel is about love, trust, and learning how to be yourself when all you want is to be anyone else. If you are looking for a sweet queer romance story with great characters, an entertaining yet emotional plot, and more wonderfully cheesy pickup lines than you can poke a stick at, this is for you!

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for sending me this free eARC (eAdvanced Reader Copy). I am leaving this review voluntarily. This title will be published 25th January 2022.

Thank you to NetGalley and the author for an advanced electronic copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Sasha and Kinsey become unexpected friends when Kinsey's relationship ends and she moves into Sasha's dorm. Fast forward two years, and they both have feelings for each other that everyone can see except them. When family trouble strikes from both sides, they will need to find a way to survive without losing each other.

This was sweet. It didn't blow my mind, but I like where the story ended up. I also really enjoyed Kinsey's parents, especially at the end. A cute romance read!

CW: drug use/abuse, strained parental relationships, child neglect

This was such a sweet friends to lovers f/f romance. Both our main characters had crushes on eachother but no one says anything for for too long. The conflict in the book wasn't my favorite it felt forced, but it was a cute book.

Easy to read, cute characters, and some sweet chemistry. A friends to lovers story. I enjoyed it, and haven't read the others in the series. Thanks to NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately, this book just wasn’t for me. I really struggled while reading due to the repetition, lack lustre plot and miscommunication.

I was excited when I read the synopsis of this book: a sapphic NA college friends to lovers with mutual secret pining and forced proximity. I found this read more like a YA than NA which was disappointing. The characters felt young and immature in their dialogue and actions. While I love the idea of mutual pining I found it was extremely repetitive. I felt like the same internal dialogue was happening in each chapter and we weren’t getting anything new other than a couple tense moments on the road trip.

When the characters finally got together it was for one night and they stayed together for less than 48 hours (without actually physically being together) before the conflict happened. I liked that it was a bit slow burn until 50% but the build up to what happened felt very lack lustre and boring.

The plot was a bit of a let down. Road trips have so much potential but nothing really happened other than the characters doing some “mind reading” and assuming the other couldn’t possibly have feelings for them. The miscommunication was really hard to read in this book and while I think it is somewhat necessary especially in friends to lovers, there was lack of good communication happening all over the place and it made it difficult to get through.

I thought the family dynamics were interesting but I found that took a front seat to the story more than the main character’s actual friendship/relationship. I was hoping for more of them together as opposed to the characters story having more to do with their respective families.

Overall, I didn’t enjoy this book but I’m sure others will. I felt there was potential as the writing style was good but the story and characters just didn’t provide an entertaining read for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and the author for a copy of this e-book in exchange for an honest review.